Today I made the stiffeners for the replacement right rudder skin. It was pretty quick second time around.

Mark, cut on bandsaw, smooth cut line on sander and finish on the Scotchbrite wheel.

Stiffeners with taper cut and edges finished, ready to be cut to length.

Matchdrilled to the new skin.

  I also dimpled the aft few holes in the left elevator root rib. On the right side I used pop rivet dimple dies and vice grips to dimple these hard to reach holes but wasn’t that happy with the resulting dimple. It was a bit shallow and slightly crooked. This time I drilled a #40 hole in the edge of my backrivet plate, countersink it and used the male dimple die in a spare squeezer set holder to make the dimple. A couple of whacks with the hammer and I got a nice result.

The c-sunk hole acts as the female die. The steel plate is clamped to the bench with the edge overhanging.